15 December 2012

Guns Kill People

I started a post the other day about my children and their ridiculous demands. It had to do with Spirit Week at the high school, and Two explaining THE NIGHT BEFORE IT WAS DUE that he needed supplies to build a life size mining cave. You can imagine the rest of the post, because I didn't finish it. And I won't finish it, because it seems trivial and whiny as I sit here today, the mother of five boys, and read about families who have lost their children to a gunman at an elementary school.

And I am angry, very angry, because it's really hard to walk into a school and kill six adults and twenty children if you don't have any fucking guns. It makes it much more difficult to stroll through a mall in Oregon and shoot holiday shoppers if you don't have any fucking guns. It makes it nearly impossible to murder people in a movie theatre, a college campus, a house of worship, and on any street in Newark or Camden--which, mind you, we've accepted because our society remains just racist enough to cry over dead white children but not so much the hundreds of dead black boys--if you DON'T HAVE ANY FUCKING GUNS.

I understand that our country won't ever be gun free because I've had to listen to bullshit about constitutional rights to own firearms my whole damn life. But I'm over it, because you know what's going to happen now? I'm going to have to walk through a metal detector to go watch a movie. In addition to already being buzzed into my school, they'll wand me on my way to the front office. Now my children will have lock-down drills twice a month, to prepare for an event that should be unthinkable. Fuck you and your right to bear arms. What about my right to the pursuit of happiness? Is a life spent preparing for a massacre a happy one?

I'm sure any member of the NRA would gladly volunteer to explain their reasoning to me, but I'm not interested. I understand there are hunters. I understand there are ranchers. Great. But you don't need handguns or semi-automatic weapons to kill deer, or foxes in your hen house. And don't even waste my time with the fucking blahdy blah blah about this doesn't happen in states where everyone has carry permits. Ask Gabrielle Giffords how that turned out.

In the next few months, after our self-centered partisan politicians pitch us over a fiscal cliff, the gun control discussion will start again. People will talk about how this latest gunman was unstable, how he had a history of mental illness, how the guns weren't even his. Fuck you. Obviously, sane people don't storm an (insert your massacre location here) and kill our (circle your choice: children, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, neighbors, community leaders).

Despite the obvious holes in this argument, I predict that nothing will change. Apparently, we don't have the wherewithal to stand against a vocal minority that continues to hold our rights hostage, and the lawmakers who sop up the blood on their hands with lobbyist cash. And because of that, our children will continue to be murdered.

Sweet Girl is five years old. I keep looking at our Christmas tree and thinking about how many presents won't be opened this year because there are fewer five year olds to open them. And then when I'm done crying over that, I think about watching her walk into school. With her backpack that is precariously close to toppling her over and her trust (and you know that doesn't come easily for this particular girl) in all the adults at her school: that's how I see her walk into school. And then when I'm done crying over the backpacks that won't be put on again, I get angry. I would write about it, but you've already said it. Sure people may just find another way to kill people, but they should have to work a hell of a lot harder to do so.

I hugged my daughter and my husband harder last night. I was home from work with a sick baby when the massacre happened in connecticut. I'm a teacher. I've had numerous parents say they wish I could pack a gun. I have a baseball bat taped to the underside of my desk in case i ever need it and I wouldn't quail to use it against anyone trying to take a kid in my care. Or in anyone else's care in that school because they are ALL OUR KIDS. ALL OF THEM. So it makes me sick and sad and so impossibly angry that some evil fucker marched into a school of all places (for many kids the only good place they have) and killed KILLED people most of them children. Who the hell does that? And how? HOW does someone even do that what possible satisfaction did that afford to a cruel mind?

I have nothing to offer in the way of comfort. All I have is a bat and a hell of a lot of anger.